Yankee Doodle Sushi

Never mind tradition: these days, diners are on a (maki) roll

Remember when eating sushi in Chicago was pushing the envelope? When it was mysterious, a little scary, even forbidden?

If you're under 50, you probably don't.

Forty years ago, Chicago had one -- one -- sushi restaurant. Kamehachi of Tokyo opened in 1967 on Wells Street, across from The Second City.

"Sushi pieces were 60 cents, and we didn't have maki rolls," recalls Sharon Perazzoli, daughter of Kamehachi's late founder, Marion Konishi. "There were no spicy sauces. And people didn't know anything about sushi back then; they'd say, 'Make me something,' and leave it in the chef's hands."

Today, those little parcels of rice, fish and veggies are everywhere in Chicago. It's not just that there are tons of sushi restaurants, though there are. Sushi has spread to Asian restaurants of all persuasions, to stylish hotel dining rooms such as NoMI, to restaurant concepts from contemporary American to Italian.

The venerable Shaw's Crab House, a prototypical East Coast-style seafood house that's famous for its fresh oysters, started serving sushi several years ago, and it now sells as much sushi as oysters, says Rich Melman, CEO of the Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises restaurant group, which owns Shaw's.

And it's not just restaurants. You can find premade sushi pieces peering out of plastic boxes in groceries, convenience stores, airport kiosks and members-only megastores. You can order sushi at U.S. Cellular Field or Wrigley Field, if you sit in the luxury suites. Eventually, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is going to need a rewrite:

Buy me nigiri with amberjack,

I don't care if it's white rice or black!

Sushi forfeited its ethnic cuisine cachet years ago. Today, it's as American as the taco.

The question is: Is that a bad thing?

Purists argue that it is, bemoaning the loss of the 20-seat sushi restaurant, where the few tables were for the luckless stragglers who couldn't find room at the sushi bar; today's sushi restaurants routinely seat 200 patrons or more, and perhaps 12 of them sit within shouting distance of the chef. People who think they're experiencing Japanese-style sushi are instead gobbling down ridiculously complicated concoctions with more ingredients than a Twinkies label.

Nigiri, arguably sushi's purest form (consisting of a single piece of fish or egg placed on a small mound of rice), has been outstripped in sales by maki rolls, long sushi rolls cut into six to eight pieces. Any sushi restaurant worth its low-sodium soy sauce offers at least 10 or more signature maki rolls, original creations designed for American tastes.

Melman says the rolls are popular because, "It's the way young people like to eat; it's the way I like to eat. You get two or three maki rolls, eight pieces each, they're easy to share, they're healthy, light and quick. That's very appealing."

That's putting it mildly. Scan a menu, and you'll find Philadelphia rolls, containing smoked salmon and that elusive Japanese delicacy, cream cheese. There are rolls crammed full of tempura-fried fish, satisfying our taste for Doritos-style crunch. Spicy tuna rolls so tongue-searing hot you can't tell if you're eating akami or salami. I recently visited a sushi restaurant that was offering Cubs and Sox maki rolls; the chef created the Sox black-and-white colors by sprinkling the rice with black tobikko, and I was afraid to ask how he achieved Cubbie blue.

But again, is this bad? After all, very few people start out as sushi purists. Few are born with an appreciation for raw horse mackerel.

Maki-mono, as practiced in this country, is the "big tent" sushi that lets everybody in. Those who regard raw fish with trepidation can order cooked maki rolls, which abound on sushi menus. There even are vegetarian maki rolls.

Granted, a traditional maki roll ought not contain mango or jalapeno. But if the fish comes from the Gulf of Mexico and the sushi chef is Korean and the restaurant is in Arlington Heights, does it matter if this Isn't How They Do It in Kyoto?

And the presence of "false" sushi doesn't necessarily forebode the end of the real deal. Remember when people warned that the fast-fooders would destroy handmade burgers? Did that happen?

If anything, creative makis may create more room for purists.

"We have a cult of customers who know that the chairs at the sushi bar are the best seats in the house," says Miae Lim, partner in Mirai Sushi in Wicker Park and Japonais, a concept with locations in Chicago, New York and Las Vegas. "If you order a hand roll at the sushi bar, the chef hands it to you. And because we cut fish off the loin to order, I can taste the difference when I'm sitting right across from my chef, as opposed to a table on the other side of the restaurant."